3.3 Reference and Anaphhora

1. 3.3 Reference and Anaphhora Week 4 language in context NJKang

2. Ice-break activity

3. Open ended. A: some one. B: Sanshinryung. In front of a pond. A: AhhhhhAhhhh. B: Why are you crying? A: I’ve lost my ____________. B: (goes into the pond and comes out holding something he lost on his hands) Is this your ___? A: Oh, no that isn’t mine. B: (goes into the pond and comes out holding something he lost on his hands) Is this your ___? A: Oh, no that isn’t mine. B: (goes into the pond and comes out holding something he lost on his hands) Is this your ___? A: Oh, yes, that is my ______. B: _________________________.

4. Referring?

5. Who’s there? • It’s me. Recognize the voice of a person Where? What situation? It is up to the person uttering it.

6. The philosophical problem of referring has • Serious consequences • Not only for theoretical linguistics, • But also for our use of the language. • Referring is not least a pragmatic problem

7. What is it? • To refer to persons and things • Indirect • Direct • It’s John (when we know who that is) • Tax return. • Problem • Need to know more It’s me It’s a friend It’s Natasha’s mother.

8. Direct referring • Call names of persons and things Indirect referring • Use referring words; I, me, she, he, it, they, etc.

9. Indirect Referring • It is possible to make reference to a certain person or object without using such a proper expression; • Napoleon • The victor of Jena, or the loser of Waterloo.

10. Problems? • The unambiguous reference of linguistic symbols • Needs direct referring of words or persons to give the map to the intersubjective ambiguity of this one word into the unambiguous reference of linguistic symbols.

11. Reference, indexicals and deictics.

12. Nouns • Proper nouns are the prim examples of linguistic expressions with proper reference: • Names name persons, institutions and in general, objects whose reference is clear. • Or it is possible to make reference to a certain person or object without using such a proper expression • The authour of the ‘Harry Potter’ • The loser of Waterloo.

13. Regular nouns • Despite their etymological affinity with the word for ‘name’, have a certain indefiniteness in their naming; • The word ‘cow’ names any female representative of the genus bovinum. • Which particular cow, what it might look like, where it might be in the pen, how many gallons of milk it yields per year,,,, • (a story of this cow is missing)

14. Indexical expressions • Need something indicating what to look for, and where • Indexical expressions are a particular kind of referential expression which, in addition to the semantics of their naming their sense, include a reference to the particular context in which that sense is put to work.

15. I am six feet tall. (Levinson 1983:58) • How do we determine ‘I’ means ‘six feet tall’ • We need the contextual coordintates of the utterance. • In order to fix those coordinates, we resort to indexicals,

16. Indexical expressions • are pragmatically determined, that is, they depend for their reference on the persons who use them.

17. Deictic elements • The chief linguistic means of expressing an indexical relationship • A pointer, telling us where to look for the particular item that is referred to.

18. Since all indexing or pointing is done by human beings, and therefore all pointing expressions have to be related to the uttering person, pointing in a particular place and at a particular time involves the traditional philosophic and linguistic categories of person, place and time.

19. Index field (Karl Buhler, 1934) Who Where When

20. Examples of deictic elements • My girl, Miss daughter (negative honorific) • Send me your slippers. (her point of view) • To the left, to your left. (your point of view) • I saw him last night. ‘last from my current point of view’ (my point view of time)

21. But these points of view • Depends on the culture and language. • So we need~~~~ • Deictic coordinates

22. Deictic coordinates? • Time, point of views, culture, something giving them specific, lexicalized expressions. • Your summer? • My winter?

23. Review • Reference direct (names of persons or things) & indirect (use it, she etc)  noun & regular nouns (Cow, just affinity, ambiguous) • Indexical expressions  needs specific referencing what to look for (that red cow beside the barn)

24. But needs deictic coordinate • Deictic elements: Indexical relationship: relationship between people, time (last week), places (hemisphere), point of view

25. So Referencing Ambiguous Indexical expressions Gain specificity Understand all detail information Deictic coordinate

26. Scripted role-play (Referring) A: It’s me. B: Me who? A: Who’s talking? B: Who is it? A:Police man! B: You! Does this dialogue make sense? Grammatically? Pragmatically? Referring problem?

27. Example 1 • A: Look at the cow! It’s big. • B: Sir, your son is here. • A: Wow! Look at that woman. Big. • B: He arrived here last month. • A: I will kill you! • ?: It was really cold.

28. Find out • Ambiguous referencing? • Indexical expressions? • Deictic elements?

29. Choose textbook dialogue and make some change.

30. From Deixis to Anaphora

31. Insider view • We need to refer to the context, not only in order to establish the proper reference for deictic terms such as next or last, but also in the case of other deictic (demonstrative) expressions whose referents cannot be identified outside of their proper context.

32. What deictic (demonstrative) coordinates (specific location, explanation) do these need? • I need a box this big. • Moving my hands • I met this girl the other day. • Index the girl? A certain female? Need explanation? Or already known? • But need ‘reminder deixis’

33. Indexical traits? • Not only do they serve to indicate the dimensions and distances of speaker space but in addition, they may indicate speaker evaluations. • ‘You are precisely the man I was talking about; you stole your neighbor’s wife’ • A deictic element often indicates other things than the original spatial or temporal relationships.

34. Find a dialogue or a sentence needs (Dialogue 1) • Deictic coordinates • Indexical traits

35. Isabel: What do you think of this ball? • James: It’s nice, and it looks handmade. Who’s it for? • Isabel: My mom. She collects ceramics. Oh, look at this blue and white bowl! It’s even prettier than that one. • James: you’re right. This one has a nicer design. • Isabel: yes, I love the design, and the shape is beautiful, too. But I am worried about bringing a bowl like this home. It’s heavy, and it might break. • James: It could be hard to get that home. Why don’t you check out those tablecloths over there? Something like that would be a lot easier to put in your suitcase • Isabel: Oh, I don’t think my mom would use a tablecloth like that. I want to find her something a little more elegant – like those silver candlesticks. • James:________________________________________

36. Isabel: What do you think of this ball? • James: It’s nice, and it looks handmade. Who’s it for? • Isabel: My mom. She collects ceramics. Oh, look at this blue and white bowl! It’s even prettier than that one. • James: you’re right. This one has a nicer design. • Isabel: yes, I love the design, and the shape is beautiful, too. But I am worried about bringing a bowl like this home. It’s heavy, and it might break. • James: It could be hard to get that home. Why don’t you check out those tablecloths over there? Something like that would be a lot easier to put in your suitcase • Isabel: Oh, I don’t think my mom would use a tablecloth like that. I want to find her something a little more elegant – like those silver candlesticks. • James:________________________________________

37. Open ended roleplay • Isabel: What do you think of this ball? • James: It’s nice, and it looks handmade. Who’s it for? • Isabel: My mom. She collects ceramics. Oh, look at this blue and white bowl! It’s even prettier than that one. • James: you’re right. This one has a nicer design. • Isabel: yes, I love the design, and the shape is beautiful, too. But I am worried about bringing a bowl like this home. It’s heavy, and it might break. • James: It could be hard to get that home. Why don’t you check out those tablecloths over there? Something like that would be a lot easier to put in your suitcase • Isabel: Oh, I don’t think my mom would use a tablecloth like that. I want to find her something a little more elegant – like those silver candlesticks. • James:________________________________________

38. Anaphora? • The pure function of referring to earlier mentions of the noun that the definite article in question identifies. • The man was waling softly; he carried a big stick, • ‘He’ refers anaphorically to ‘the man’

39. Anaphora does not always obey • The strict referential rules of grammar, as in the case of the so-called ‘lazy pronouns (Partee 1972) and other elements with ambiguous ‘local reference’ that everybody accepts and understands correctly because, in a given context, they are unambiguous.

40. He’s been to Italy many time but he still doesn’t speak the language.  The language he doesn’t learn isn’t mentioned previously in this sentence but still can know what it is. • The man who gave his paycheck to his wife was wiser than the man who gave it to his mistress.  ‘It’ is his paycheck and it’s not given to the mistress, but this sentence indicates that he gave it to his mistress.

41. Not anaphoric reference but its pragmatic aspects • A pragmatic approach to anaphora tries to take into account not only what the anaphorical pronoun is referring to, the antecedent which can be a noun or noun phrase, a piece of context, but also the whole situation.

42. Implicit evaluation of the context • Read the dialogue II • Select some parts of conversation that uses indexical traits, anaphoric expression, and non anaphoric reference. Or indicates a speaker used an implicit evaluation of something or someone.

43. What is funny about this?What do we need more here?Indexical? Or deictic? A: what’s your name? B: Betty Skymitch. A: Spell it, please. B: B-E-T-T-Y.

44. Not grammar but pragmatics. • A: let’s go to the movies • B: I’ll bring the Kleenex. • A: (in store) Good morning. Do you have anything to treat complete loss of voice? • B: Good morning sir. What can I do for you today? • A: did you get to look at those dresses? • B: No, I didn’t come that way.

45. Homework • Can you create dialogues or sentences or use textbook dialogues and identify the references, indexical expressions, deictic traits, ambiguous anaphora, etc. If don’t then, create these contexts in the dialogue of the textbook. • Explain these using theories. • Read chapter 4 of pragmatics and identify what communicative principle, the cooperative principle including cooperation and face, and cooperation and flouting